There are two things Edwin hates most in unlife. The first and most objectionable is being hunted relentlessly through the familiar streets of his home city, where he has as much right to lurk with sinister intent as anyone else, thank you. The second is somewhat less fraught but just as irritating, and that's being interrupted while he is reading.

He was just getting to a good part as well. He folds down a page corner of his Harlequin paperback and sighs.

"Yes, Daniel, hello, good evening. What is it?"

Daniel is a stripling of a vamp, but Edwin supposes most of his kind look slender and waifish compared to his own substantial stature. He always has been something of an exception, for better or for worse. Danny boy here does look a bit distraught about something though, his dark eyes shimmery with tears, so Edwin attempts a more sympathetic tone.

"Daniel? What's the problem?"

"They got Carlos," Daniel says dolefully.

Ah. Another one bites the dust. Or becomes the dust. Ashes to ashes and so forth and all that. Edwin wishes he could feel more surprised, but the truth is, everyone knows Temptation has gotten risky since hunter turf began to sprawl in that direction, and Carlos had been pushing his luck there for a long time. Carlos, Edwin had said to him a hundred times if he'd said it once, just because you're a vampire it doesn't mean you have to live exclusively on a diet of goths.

But had the idiot listened? No, of course he hadn't.

"Edwin? Did you hear?"

"I heard. Carlos once again died as he lived. Fully dedicated to being a dumbass." Edwin turns back to his book. Her bosoms heaved, desperate to be freed from the confines of her corset...

"Victoria was wounded as well. Edwin, if she doesn't make it—"

Now that properly gets Edwin's attention, being about as welcome as a garlic pizza and garlic fries with a side of garlic mayo. He knows what it would mean if Victoria bites it, so to speak.

It would mean the leadership of the coterie will be supremely fucked. Because the leader of the coterie would be him.